


A Light, Floating on Dark Water

by Dracorex



Category: Lucifer (TV), Sunless Sea
Genre: Angst, Deckerstar is endgame, Developing Friendships, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Horror, but i did it anyway, but technically nothing happens in this fic so, many strange happenings are implied, the casual not-quite-monotheism of Lucifer, the rich wild mysterious mythos of Sunless Sea, two people have a number of conversations, was never really meant to mix with
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-28 01:08:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17777678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dracorex/pseuds/Dracorex
Summary: She had no idea what to expect when she headed underground. He was not expecting to become emotionally invested in her.





	A Light, Floating on Dark Water

**Author's Note:**

> Written in extremely vague relation to the prompts "silver, flowers, you did choose me (3x23), the talking bench up on the hill (3x23)" for thedeckerstarnetwork's 2019 Valentine's Day partners challenge; MissieLynne has written to the same prompts here: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13207760/1/Silver-Teapots-and-Pressed-Roses
> 
> I mean: there are silvery things. There are flowers. The words and the context in which they were spoken are not present, but we all know that Chloe wouldn't put up with Lucifer if he wasn't capable of giving her a real reason to like him. There is unfortunately no actual bench on a hill, though there are emotionally charged conversations taking place at elevated locations. I would like to hope that I've somewhat achieved the spirit of the prompt, if not the letter.
> 
> The ten-second summary for those of you not familiar with Sunless Sea: alternate-universe Victorian London + exploring a Lovecraftian underground sea = tongue-in-cheek whimsical Gothic horror survival/exploration.
> 
> Find me as juravern on Tumblr if seeking a more exhaustive explanation.

“I was told that your ship will go all the way to Irem.”

“This ship is absolutely capable of going all the way,” the charismatic host informed her with a smirk, just loud enough to be heard over the noise of the shipboard party going on around them. Contrary to what she had thought a seasoned ship’s captain might look like, he was impeccably attired and equally good-looking. “But what, if I may be so bold as to ask,” as if he wasn’t clearly a fearless troublemaker, “brings a fine lady like you here seeking the other side of the Unterzee?”

“An obligation,” the woman said shortly, her blue eyes darting a glance down at the ornate chest she carried under one arm.

His dark eyes did not miss it. “That is an outlandish artefact you have there. Making a delivery?”

She sighed, shifting her satchel on her shoulder so that she could show the chest to him properly. “I mean to discover the owner of this box and dispose of it accordingly, yes.”

“It’s definitely Iremi,” the man agreed. “I haven’t seen a whisper-locked box in some time. Welcome aboard, then. We’ll set out in three days’ time, and arrive at Irem in, oh, a few weeks. Arrange the details with Maze – that’s the bloodthirsty deviless over there – and do let me know” his tone turned flirtatious again “if you need ways to pass the time.”

Her scowl apparently did not bother him in the slightest.

* * *

She was uncertain whether booking passage aboard _Lux_ had been a mistake.

There were all sorts of rumours about the Neath. About how and why London had mysteriously ended up underground, a mile beneath the surface. About the dangers that lurked within the streets of Fallen London, and the dangers that openly threatened upon the sunless sea that lapped at its shores. It was said that the laws of physics were not entirely reliable down here, that the laws of life and death weren’t particularly well-defined either, and that squid-faced people were the least of one’s problems.

“Oh, don’t mind the outcast,” the captain remarked cheerfully, glass of whiskey in hand. “He’s a wonderful cook.”

The grilled fish before her suddenly seemed less appealing. But she’d paid an outrageous sum of money for this trip to begin with, which included the meals. And a guarantee of her safety. The cannons mounted on the ship were perhaps not for show. The problem was, _Lux_ was apparently not just a merchant ship, or even one primarily intended to ferry passengers.

No, it was more like a pleasure cruise. It was a floating drinking-house, a den of iniquity that happened to possess a steel hull and a steam-engine, entertaining visitors at various ports across an unsettling sea of black-green waters, her course dictated by the whims of her captain, who claimed to be the Devil.

This wasn’t a particularly notable thing in itself, as she had already encountered one or two devils herself in Fallen London, yellow-eyed and soul-obsessed but otherwise unnervingly human-like in appearance. The predatory patience of their attitudes nonetheless conveyed their inhumanity in the literal sense of the term, which the cheerfully earnest captain of _Lux_ thankfully did not resemble, even if he did insist on behaving in some of the most scandalous ways.

“Darling! Why do I find you brooding here belowdecks?” He slid into a seat across from her without being invited, sincere curiosity writ upon his face.

Honestly, the issue wasn’t his insistence upon being not just a devil but _the_ (“former” he also adamantly added) Lord of Hell, it was his persistent interest in her and why she was supposedly immune to his manly wiles. “Where do I even start,” she shot back irritably.

“Linda tells me that you’re from the Surface, and this is your first time on the zee.”

She stared at him, trying to process the number of implications. The ship’s doctor was an upbeat, intelligent woman, but who might have been gossiping with… well, to be fair, this man was her employer, and it wasn’t like they had actually discussed anything truly needing secrecy. The way he’d mentioned the surface, and the way all the sailors down here twisted the Ss in their nautical terms into Zs. Zailors, zee-ztories, it sounded childish.

“You _are_ all right, aren’t you?” he continued when she hadn’t responded, mildly puzzled and with a touch of vague worry.

She shook herself, casting aside her thoughts. “I’m fine, sorry. What is it?”

He was staring at her as if something had just occurred to him. “Darling, you really haven’t been to the Neath before, have you?”

“This is my first trip down here. Why?”

“Then you don’t know anything! That’s positively criminal, my dear. Up on deck right now, I insist.”

Positively bewildering, actually, and she did enjoy the relative quiet between ports, with only a very few other passengers aboard aside from the crew, but as long as her host was attempting to make conversation like a normal gentleman, she might as well learn what she could. He gestured for her to go ahead of him up the stairs, and when she reached the top the view took her breath away.

“We’re in the Corsair’s Forest,” her self-appointed guide told her, coming up to stand beside her.

And it did resemble a forest – a forest of massive, jagged stone trunks looming out of the dark, stalactites and stalagmites on a scale she had never before imagined. Light from the ship’s prow lamps limned the sharp rocks in silver, highlighting jade and deep emerald tones in the stone.

“Wow,” she breathed. The captain beamed at her, for once simply happy, without the almost manic energy he so often carried.

There were faint lights glimmering at a height in the distance, and as the ship chugged ever closer it became clear that on a monumental stalagmite, so huge it was more like an oddly shaped hill, a town was precariously perched. Dwellings had been cut into the rock, more structures of mismatched materials climbed ever higher, rickety walkways wound the steep crags and were strung between neighbouring towers of stone.

“Wait,” she said suddenly, as the thought occurred to her. “When you say _Corsair’s_ Forest…”

“Oh, yes indeed.” His tone was matter-of-fact, but his eyes were narrowed slightly as he stared out at the haphazard settlement. “Gaider’s Mourn is a pirate haven. Never fear, I promised you safety, and my word is my bond.”

“If you don’t like them, then why come here?”

He looked down at her with a sardonic smile. “I’m a businessman, my intrepid traveller, and _Lux_ isn’t cheap to keep afloat. The people who frequent this rock are some of my best customers. Besides, anyone who would try anything aboard this ship will regret it.”

* * *

 The next week or so passed in much the same way, or better. _Lux_ docked at a lantern-lit city of painted pillars and ornate roofs, with watchful guards both breathing and stone-carved. While other zailors on shore-leave and the boldest of the locals boarded the grand ship for a night of drinks and adventure under the crew’s watch, she took to the narrow streets with her gracious host, who kept the lewd jokes to a minimum as he told her of the New Khanate and its peculiarly exacting customs. Two days later they sailed through the Sea of Lilies, masses of great round leaves and fuchsia-pink flowers, while morbid stories were traded by the first mate and the chief engineer about the prison at its heart, and the bone tower deep underwater.

That was how she came to find herself following the captain up a steep rocky trail to a ledge offering a spectacular view of the most eerily beautiful reefs she had ever seen, and telling him about why she was out here in the first place.

“My father was a zee-captain,” she said quietly, looking out at the iridescent moon-glow of the coral formations. They grew right out of the water in crests and knolls, forming shapes that teased at the eye. “Is, maybe, but he hasn’t returned, or even sent a letter, in a very long time. I don’t know if the chest belongs to him – it was delivered anonymously, and I can’t open it to see within. I decided I have to find out, one way or another, and to see why he loved this underground world so much.”

When she turned to look at him, his gaze was distant, unseeing. “I haven’t spoken to my father in a long time either,” he finally confessed, and there was a heaviness to his words.

“Did you come here to get away from him?” It was a very forward question, but the often remarkably uninhibited man she was speaking to was unlikely to mind.

“That was- part of it.” He shoved his hands into his pockets, tilting his head up to look at the false-stars twinkling in the darkness, from the cavern roof high above. “I got tired of Hell. And frankly I’d prefer to avoid the stars.”

“Are you… worried that the sunlight’s going to kill you?” The chief engineer aboard _Lux_ , a perky young woman with her hair up in a ponytail, had excitedly questioned her at length about the Surface, wondering aloud about what a vast blue sky overhead felt like, but had also expressed her concern that, as someone born and raised in the Neath, if she ever ventured up she’d fade away beneath the Sun.

“Oh, no, quite the other way around,” he said cryptically, and turned away to head back down.

* * *

“It _is_ him,” she will say, holding herself tight, staring out at the petal-strewn, frost-crusted terraces of Irem.

Irem, which the captain will have told her was a city that will exist, half in dream and half in yet-to-come. Irem of the grand pillars, of basalt and gold, red blooms and white ice. Irem, whose otherworldly splendour will not compare to the weight of the knowledge she sought. They will not give her the words that will unlock the whisper-locked puzzlebox, but they will give her the name of the one who had the box made, and a clue to seek his whereabouts.

He will wait beside her, until she says, “They gave me a riddle, of all the-“ She will gather her composure, and ask. “Which is the cat’s chiefest claw?”

He will hesitate before he speaks. “I know who they mean, and I know where. Fair warning: however matters unfold, it won’t be pleasant.”

* * *

_Lux_ turned her prow south; they had gone very far north to reach Irem. “Any further and we’d have found ourselves at Avid Horizon,” the navigator informed her, a tired-looking man in a leather jacket. “Anyway, we’re heading to Aestival to resupply, and then it’s westwards straight to the Isle of Cats. No more party stops along the way, captain’s orders.”

She hadn’t expected that; the captain was enough of a gentleman to be tolerable company despite his plethora of vices, but he did not seem the type to… well. That might be an unkind thought. He had been of assistance, and good companionship, well beyond the requirements of a mere agreement for passage.

“What do you think of him?” she asked instead. “The way he runs this ship” he did seem to do little of that, given the number of times she’d watched him mingle with guests or sweep them off to his cabin “all that ‘devil’ talk…”

“He’s my employer, ma’am,” the navigator said with a shrug, then glanced about and dropped his voice to a whisper. “I don’t know about him being _the_ devil, but he _is_ weird. Don’t get me wrong, a captain who can charm the knickers off officials in every port, and throw a troublemaker off the ship with one hand, is a brilliant one to get behind, but it’s weird. But he’s not a drownie, he hasn’t stolen anyone’s soul, and he’s not Khaganian, so. Honestly, it’s best to not think about it, not look, and let it go.” He shrugged again.

* * *

The subject reared its head again off the coast of a lush, shockingly sunlit isle, golden light streaming down from a hole in the Neath-roof. Or rather, a massive mass of violet spines erupted from the zee, distressingly difficult to focus the eyes upon and radiating aggression. “Lorn-fluke!” the lookout cried.

That appeared to be the signal for everyone to scramble for cover, and for the captain to go striding up to the railing, tall and fierce in the sharp lines of his black suit. She ducked away behind the nearest large object – a barrel of fresh water from the island spring, not yet brought belowdecks – and looked around to find that no one else remained in sight. The reason became immediately evident when the lorn-fluke _screamed_ -

-and its voice was power and flame, sound that twisted thought and fire that seared spiralling shapes into the very air-

-only to be met by a mirror-barrage of burning invocations, roared by a reverberating legion of voices; indecipherably complex sigils seemed to distort each other into a thunderclap detonation that rocked the entire bulk of the ship.

Out among the roiling viridian waves, the long spines rippled and withdrew slightly. The captain snarled once more, inhumanly deep and literally fiery – and when the air stopped shimmering, the sea-beast was gone. She tried to blink away the afterimages; their radiance threatened to blind.

The Devil turned to look at her, fire blazing in his eyes and embers smouldering on the edges of his clothes.

* * *

The Isle of Cats contained no literal cats. It was, however, another gathering place of the vile and dissolute, a patchwork of taverns, brothels and honey-dens. There was a sickly-sweet scent of roses in the air, undercut by brimstone, and the clifftops were a riot of crimson blooms, watched over by a stone tower.

She very much wanted to burn the place down, knowing what the Devil had told her about they did, with the bees and the garden of cages.

He didn’t like the place either; he had avoided her since that day with the lorn-fluke, leaving her to work out bits and pieces of understanding from the crew, about the language of the stars and powers no mortal human could bear, but for this he had sat down across from her the day before and described, in short sharp words accompanied by too many glasses of alcohol, the particular sort of horror that the rulers of this island traded in.

“Stay close,” he now said simply, tugging at the cuffs of his sleeves in that telltale gesture of nerves, and together they threaded their way through the bustling crowd of seafarers.

The establishment he led her into was a pleasure-den, but he paid their surroundings barely any mind – the waterfalls of fine silks, the glimmer of gold and gems everywhere, the artfully painted courtesans – and with only a cursory nod to one of the ladies, went up the stairs, through the winding corridors without hesitation. It was just occurring to her with some indignation that he was _familiar_ with this place, when he opened a door and gestured for her to enter.

It was a well-appointed office, with teak cabinets and a rich rug on the floor. The occupant was equally refined, sharp-featured and tawny-skinned, in azure silk and with ivory-clawed rings upon their right hand. “My dear Morningstar,” they purred.

“Isery,” he responded, prowling across the room to them; the King’s Claw rose from their seat to meet him with a kiss that bordered on the obscene.

She did not look away, and so did not miss the smiles they gave each other when they broke apart, entirely sincere yet edged with slightly too many teeth. “What brings you and your friend here?” Isery asked, an assessing glint in their amber eyes.

* * *

“Oh dear. The poor unfortunate soul must have run afoul of pirates. They sold him to us, and we sent him to the garden. I can’t imagine there’s much left of his mind by now.”

* * *

 “The memories of a well-travelled zee-captain are worth a very great deal. If you were hoping that favour would stretch this far, I shall be disappointed.”

“I hoped for no such thing, darling. What do you want?”

“I do so love a spot of irony, so let us say you now owe me a favour. Don’t worry, my dear, I would never ask you for anything you wouldn’t want to give.”

* * *

“You don’t want to see him in that condition. Trust me, please.”

* * *

“Well, there was this. I had almost forgotten about it. He tried to bribe one of the Sisters to take a message.” Isery slid open a drawer. “Here is what I presume was his pocket-watch, and a note enclosed within. For you, and only you, freely given.”

* * *

“He’ll be true to his word in this. I know him well enough for that. Nothing of your father’s will remain here. He will be at peace.”

* * *

They brought aboard a coffin of polished rosewood. She waited till they were alone in the hold before lifting the lid, and then she turned helplessly to him and cried in his arms. Afterwards, they sat on crates in the gloom as she read the note by lamplight. The whisper-locked chest was brought out, and she murmured her father’s pet name for her to the delicate mechanisms, which shifted and clicked.

She stared at the caskets of brilliant sapphires within, and the other curious treasures tucked alongside, wealth and a taste of adventure for his beloved daughter. “Lucifer, I saw how you- drove off that monster. Why couldn’t you do something like that here? You say you’re the Devil, but…”

“Chloe.” His expression was sombre, dark eyes shining in the dim, flickering light from the lantern. “Quite aside from how you’re the first human I’ve known who hasn’t been frightened away or driven quite mad by seeing the truth straight on… Look, I set the stars alight, at the beginning. And the stars, the Judgements, are what enforce the laws. My Father’s laws, the laws they’ve decided should be, the laws of physics. All I did that day was speak a few words in the language of the Judgements. Words which bear such power they shape reality.”

“So you’re saying you… chased it off just by swearing at it?” They cracked faint, brief smiles at each other. “But more importantly, that your power, as a, a fallen angel or whatever, is too overwhelming to just throw about.”

“Exactly so.” He seemed to have relaxed marginally at her calm attitude towards him. “And that hasn’t covered the number of people who’d be unhappy about it if I did. The Sun would probably object if it saw, and then I’d kill it, and that would lead to so much trouble. Humans are terribly fragile. And yet plenty of you have such ambition too. If I destroyed this horrid isle, a half dozen others would simply start up their own, with no Pirate-King left to monopolise the trade. Then there would be those who’d petition me to vanquish their enemies, do this or that. Or the Brimstone Convention, they’d probably like to reinstall me on my throne in Hell. Overblown sense of villain-worship. I am not evil, but that’s old spilt milk.”

“What’s the deal with… Hell?”

“I abandoned Hell because I didn’t want to deal with it anymore, punishing sinners, keeping demons in line… Some of them took the opportunity to start a revolution, oust the aristocracy and all that. Frankly, I did my best not to follow the news.”

She sighed. “Lucifer. I can’t sit by and do nothing. All this is insane, and terrifying, but I can’t. Maybe you can’t just bring the light or whatever it is, but you’ve got money, and connections, and we can do this the human way, one step at a time. Maybe it’s not going to change the world, but that’s not the point. I know you agree that it’s unfair, it’s wrong and cruel, the things people like Isery do. Help me find ways to stop them?”

He took her hand in his own. “Well, Maze has been spoiling for a proper fight.”


End file.
